Legal insights
Analysis from the front lines of IP & technology law.
Our attorneys write about the developments shaping intellectual property—from the PTAB and the Federal Circuit to the practical realities of protecting fast-moving technology.
Default and Default Judgment in Federal Court: Rules 55 and 60 and the Cost of Ignoring a Lawsuit
This article explains how a federal lawsuit turns into a default judgment, what that judgment can and cannot do, and how a defendant who missed the deadline can get out from under it. It walks through the two-step structure of Rule 55, the answer deadlines that trigger default, and the rule that a default admits well-pleaded facts but not damages or conclusions of law. It then covers the checks courts apply before entering judgment, including jurisdiction, service, the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act affidavit, the Eitel factors, Rule 54(c), and the special regimes for foreign states and the United States. The second half covers relief: the good-cause standard for setting aside an entry of default, the Rule 60(b) grounds for vacating a default judgment, the Supreme Court's decisions in Pioneer, Peralta, Espinosa, and Kemp, and the circuit tests built on them. An extended worked example, common mistakes, an FAQ, and takeaways for plaintiffs and defendants close the article.
Bankruptcy and Creditors' Rights Toolkit
Insolvency touches most businesses from one of three positions: as a debtor deciding whether and how to file, as a creditor deciding what to do about someone else's filing, or as a counterparty whose contract, collateral, or receivable is suddenly governed by a different set of rules. This toolkit organizes all three. It covers the out-of-court alternatives that are frequently better than a case, the chapters and the choice among them, the first-day mechanics that determine whether a business survives its own filing, the creditor's sixty-day window in which most of the available value is captured, avoidance exposure and its defenses, and the guarantor and successor liability questions that survive everything else. Each stage points to the deadline that governs it, because in insolvency practice nearly every substantive right is lost by a calendar rather than by a ruling.
State Consumer Privacy Laws: The CCPA, the CPRA, and the Multi-State Patchwork
The United States has no comprehensive federal privacy law, and roughly twenty states have filled the gap with statutes that are similar enough to invite a single compliance program and different enough to punish anyone who builds one carelessly. This article maps that landscape. It explains the structure every one of these laws shares, applicability thresholds, controller and processor roles, consumer rights, opt-out mechanics, sensitive data treatment, and data protection assessments, then identifies the places where the statutes genuinely diverge and where those divergences create real operational work. California receives extended treatment because it remains the outlier: it has a dedicated regulator, it covers employee and business-to-business data, it treats cross-context behavioral advertising as sharing, and it is the only comprehensive state law with a private right of action, for data breaches. The article then covers the sector-specific statutes that often matter more in practice than the comprehensive ones, including Illinois biometric law, Washington health data law, the federal video privacy statute, and the wiretapping theories driving website tracking litigation. It closes with a program build-out, a worked example, an FAQ, and related reading.
A Comprehensive Guide to Federal Civil Litigation for Small Businesses: With a Focus on Patent Litigation
This guide walks small business owners, legal professionals, and lay readers through every stage of federal civil litigation, with a sustained focus on patent cases—among the most complex and expensive disputes a small company can face. It moves chronologically from pre-filing strategy and cost assessment through venue selection, pleadings, discovery, claim construction, inter partes review, summary judgment, trial, damages, appeal, and enforcement. Using a single hypothetical small business followed across the entire life of a case, it translates technical doctrine into plain language and concrete consequences. It anchors each stage in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and controlling Supreme Court and Federal Circuit authority, and it incorporates developments through early 2026, including the 2025 overhaul of PTAB discretionary-denial practice and the status of patent-eligibility reform legislation. The aim is not to replace counsel but to help business owners make informed decisions, control costs, and ask their lawyers the right questions.
Trademark Challenges in the Metaverse and Virtual Goods: Brand Protection Strategies for Digital-First Commerce
This is the operational brand-protection playbook for virtual goods and the metaverse—the strategy and enforcement companion to our doctrinal analysis of MetaBirkins and the post-Jack Daniel's Rogers test. It covers building a virtual-goods trademark portfolio under the USPTO's overhauled 2025 fee structure, drafting ID-Manual-conforming specifications across Classes 9, 35, and 41, likelihood-of-confusion and bridging-the-gap analysis for digital products, and trade dress in virtual environments. The heart of the piece is enforcement: a calibrated, evidence-driven program for a digital-first brand, the counterfeiting and gray-market arsenal (ex parte seizures, statutory and treble damages, CBP recordation), and the distinctive problem of policing decentralized platforms and pseudonymous infringers. It closes with virtual-goods licensing, interoperability, creator programs, and international coordination. Written for in-house trademark teams, brand managers, and outside counsel.
Startup Formation Legal Checklist: A Practical Guide
A startup is, legally speaking, a stack of documents, and the companies that raise smoothly and exit well are the ones that did the boring formation paperwork correctly from day one. This checklist walks through choosing and forming the entity, completing the organizational housekeeping that makes the company operational, pinning down founder ownership with vesting stock and the unforgiving 30-day Section 83(b) election, assigning the intellectual property the company is built on, and standing up the equity machinery of a cap table, an option plan, and a 409A valuation. Each phase pairs the steps with the governing authority—the DGCL, Sections 83, 409A, and 1202 of the Internal Revenue Code, and the Copyright Act's work-made-for-hire rule—and flags the costly mistakes founders make. It is general information, not legal advice; tax rules and several areas discussed are fast-moving.
Personal Injury Claim Intake and Evaluation Checklist: A Practical Checklist
A personal injury case is won or lost in the first thirty days, usually on facts that are cheap to preserve and impossible to recreate. This checklist runs the intake and evaluation in the order the clock requires: conflicts and limitations first, then the liability and coverage investigation that determines whether the case is economically viable at all, then preservation, then the damages and lien picture that determines what the client will actually net. It includes explicit rejection criteria, a coverage map, a preservation letter inventory, and a valuation worksheet. It is written to be used by a lawyer at a first meeting or by a claimant organizing a claim alone.
The Fine Line: Copyright Protection for Style, Typefaces, and Fonts
Style is not copyrightable, and in the United States neither is a typeface "as such," yet the font file on your computer may be a protected computer program. This article untangles that paradox. It explains why copyright protects expression but not the ideas, methods, and styles behind it (17 U.S.C. 102(b)), why the Copyright Office and the courts have long refused to register typeface designs (37 C.F.R. 202.1(e); Eltra Corp. v. Ringer), and how scalable font software nonetheless earns protection as code (Adobe Systems v. Southern Software). It walks through the alternatives designers actually rely on—design patents under 35 U.S.C. 171, trademark for font names, and ironclad license agreements—and offers worked hypotheticals, a practitioner FAQ, and concrete licensing guidance for anyone who creates, sells, or uses type.
Drafting Software License Agreements: Key Terms and Negotiation Points
Software runs modern business, which makes software license agreements among the most consequential contracts companies sign—and among the most misunderstood, with vendors presenting forms as non-negotiable and customers fixating on price while ignoring the terms that carry far greater risk. This article explains how to understand, draft, and negotiate these agreements across SaaS, on-premise, and hybrid deployments, following a fictional SaaS vendor and an enterprise customer through a single negotiation. It works through the copyright foundation, the license grant and its scope and exclusivity, the consequential covenant-versus-condition line drawn by MDY v. Blizzard, service levels, data rights and privacy, open source, warranties and disclaimers under UCC 2-316, IP-infringement indemnification, limitation of liability under UCC 2-719, audit rights, and the source-code escrow and Section 365(n) protections that keep a customer afloat if the vendor fails. The throughline: the best agreements allocate each risk to the party best able to manage it rather than letting one side extract maximum advantage.
Winding Down a Business: Dissolution, Creditors, and Final Filings
Closing a business is a sequence with a required order, and the most expensive mistakes are made by owners who distribute assets before resolving liabilities. Doing it correctly protects the owners and directors from personal liability, cuts off claims after a defined date, and ends the filing obligations that otherwise generate penalties for years. This guide walks the sequence: deciding whether to wind down or pursue an alternative, obtaining the authorizations, planning the wind-down and its cash requirements, meeting the employee obligations that arrive first and carry personal exposure, terminating contracts and leases, running the statutory creditor claims procedure that bars later claims, liquidating assets, filing final tax returns and obtaining clearances, cancelling licenses and registrations, distributing what remains, and filing dissolution in every state where the entity is registered. Throughout, the organizing rule is that liabilities come before distributions, because every personal liability described here flows from money leaving the company too early.
Selecting and Drafting an Arbitration Clause
An arbitration clause is usually the last provision negotiated and the first one that matters when something goes wrong, and most of them are copied from a form that nobody selected for the deal at hand. This guide treats the choice as a real one. It sets out when arbitration is genuinely better than litigation and when it is not, then works through each drafting decision in the order it should be made: scope, seat, administrator and rules, the number and qualifications of arbitrators, discovery and motion practice, confidentiality, remedies, class waivers, consolidation across related contracts, interim and emergency relief, fee allocation, and appellate review. It closes with the drafting failures that produce satellite litigation before the merits are ever reached.
Remote Video Depositions: Logistics, Remote Exhibits, Objections, and the Off-Camera Coaching Problem
This article explains the law and practice of remote video depositions in federal civil litigation, from the authorization in Rule 30(b)(4) and the rule that a remote deposition takes place where the witness answers, through the officer, oath, and recording requirements of Rules 28 and 30. It covers how exhibits work when no one shares a table, how objections and instructions behave over a delayed audio feed, and how the seven-hour limit and the motion to terminate apply when the technology fails. The center of the article is the off-camera coaching problem: the case law on conferences between lawyer and witness from Hall v. Clifton Precision onward, the new channels that video creates for improper assistance, and the tools examiners and courts use to detect and sanction it. Later sections address witness exclusion under Rule 26(c) and the 2023 amendment to Evidence Rule 615, the use of remote testimony under Rules 32 and 43, and the special risks of examining a witness located abroad. An extended worked example, common mistakes, an FAQ, and practical takeaways close the article.